Blog Archives

Conspiracy got down the first three bosses in Icecrown Citadel this week. Since we only spend 2 days on 25-mans, and Wednesday was really hard because of multiple healer DC problems, we had a slightly shorter raid week than we were expecting. I also got to go moonkin most of the time, since we had several healers come back to raid with us this week.

We did, however, manage to beat the first three encounters.

Lord Marrowar – Is actually pretty easy if your raid group has a little situational awareness. I did, however, find it particularly funny when my moonkin got impaled on a spike. I even forgot to take a kill picture on this one. Sorry Conspiracy!

Lady Deathwhisper – We struggled with finding a good strategy that would get us to phase 2 without having the tanks get overwhelmed with adds. I think this was the only real challenge we faced so far in the instance. We hit the 10 minute enrage timer a couple times before we figured out something that worked well for us. This is also the fight where raid members DC’d the most, both on Tuesday AND Wednesday. I’m starting to think there’s something about that room that causes people to get disconnected, though I don’t have any real proof of it. Also, this is a fight where moonkin DPS really shines. You pretty much get to stand & nuke with very little movement (though you do have to move out of goop).

Gunship Battle – Super fun & interesting. We wasted an aweful lot of time playing with our rocket bares! We did beat the encounter, however half our raid got stuck on the enemy ship, while half of us were on our ship, and there was much confusion at the end of the fight. Fortunately, our raid’s Master Looter still had access to the loot chest. OH and one more thing. The rocket packs need to stop shifting druids out of moonkin, cat, & tree form. If you have druids on the assault team, it’s really annoying for them to have to keep switching back into their form.

We didn’t have time to try out the Saurfang, but I hear that he’s also pretty challenging. I have my typhoon all unglyphed and ready to go kite!

Overall, we had a lot of fun with this new content, and I can’t wait to see more of it!

I brought the raid healing strategies up to the current version of what people are doing, based on the feedback I got from the surveys. I also did a major revison for the Nourish & Lifebloom strategy pages. My strategy also now talks about 10-man and 5-man strategies in addition to the most common 25-man strategies, so that it is more sensitive to the needs of new players (while still containing useful info for more experienced players, too).

I went over the new talent specs I’m recommending for 3.3.There are currently 4 versions, and at this point, choosing your talent specs for 3.3 leaves you with a lot of options & choices (which is both good and bad). Picking your talent specs feels like a “choose your own adventure” book rather than just picking up one “cookie cutter” spec. The short version is that haste is now more important, so Celestial Focus is more useful as we work on hitting the 856 haste cap (with raid buffs).

I revised my plan on how to glyph in 3.3, along with further explaining when I recommend using the rapid rejuv glyph. This is something I’d like to get feedback from other people about once we’ve actually been able to try out the new glyph in raids.

And more!

EDIT: The leveling guide revamp wasn’t done in time, so I’ll have to spend the next week or so updating it.

I did a whole explanatory post a while back (with pictures!) about how the 5-man group LFG feature was going to work. I went over how the new loot system worked, along with some of the other features. You can find that post here.

There is also a new Looking for Raid tool, which I haven’t posted about yet before.If you open up your raid tab, there’s a button there that lets you use the new feature. It’s not the same menu as looking for 5-man groups anymore.

There are lots of druid changes in 3.3 (mostly for resto & some for moonkin, only a couple for feral). First, here are the druid-related patch notes AND what they mean to you. After I teach this morning, I’m coming home and spending the rest of the day working on outlining other info you’ll need for the patch. This first post is just the druid-related patch note changes with explanations. I’ll post more (including my 3.3 healing guide!) as the day progresses.

Druid 3.3 changes:

Rebirth: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 20 minutes down to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.(This change means that we can res people twice as often. Yay!)

Balance Druids:

Eclipse: This effect will not activate again within 15 seconds of either type of Eclipse effect firing, in addition to the existing 30-second cooldown for each type of Eclipse.

(Should also be going live: Effect of Eclipse should be buffed to off-set other Eclipse change)

(they also Nerfed the Tier 8 2-piece set bonus for moonkin, which means you should upgrade to your 4-piece Tier 9 and/or to your Tier 10 set s and not hold onto that now-outdated bonus).

The Eclipse change is breaking the Wise Eclipse addon. This means that you should stop trying to use the Wise Eclipse Addon after the patch hits. You also can’t cancel the aura to be able to re-proc the other type of Eclipse. This won’t effect a lot of players (who aren’t using cancel-aura macros or Wise Eclipse), however they are buffing the Effect of Eclipse to offset the “nerf”.

There is also currently a BUG with Eclipse, where Squawk and Awe (and a lot of other mods) aren’t detecting the Eclipse buff. You will need a new timer mod. Check your mods before going out to raid! ClassTimer combined with ClassTimer Eclipse seems to be the best combo I’ve worked out so far, where they track both the proc & the cooldown. They will eventually fix this bug, so don’t totally freak out (just go download the class timer mods for now).

Force of Nature: Health on the treants has been increased.

Pet Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players. (Treants will have more health and will be less likely to die super fast when you cast them in PvE. Yay!)

Feral Druids

Prowl: This ability no longer has multiple ranks and penalizes movement speed by 30%.

Predatory Strikes: The Predatory Swiftness buff from this talent now has an 8-second duration.

The prowl change means that Prowl was buffed for lower level druids. Prowl should be unchanged for high level druids. Predatory Swiftness lasts a shorter duration, so you have to use it sooner in your PvP fights.

Restoration Druids:

Gift of the Earthmother: Redesigned. This talent now increases spell haste by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the base global cooldown of Lifebloom by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of its previous effects.

Rejuvenation: The base duration on all ranks of this spell is now 15 seconds. (They buffed lower ranks, higher rank NOT changed)

Tranquility: The cooldown on this spell has been reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes. (not really a big change)

Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation: This glyph allows for the druid’s haste to reduce the time between the periodic healing effects of Rejuvenation.

The Gift of the Earth Mother change means that you need more haste from gear. See this post for more info on the 3.3 resto druid changes. You may want to change your spec to include Celestial Focus if you have 735 haste (or less), OR if you tend to run 5-man instances and don’t have access to the haste raid buffs.

The glyph of rapid rejuvenation is nice. However, it is better for 5-man and 10-man players than for 25-man raid healers. This is because the shortened time between ticks also means that you can keep it on fewer people (because it shortens the overall duration).

I’ll have more info on the 3.3 resto druid changes (and what it means for you!) in the new version of my healing guide. I should have that posted before the servers come back up (have no fear!).